Commission to reassign work to executive agencies

The European Commission is planning to cut costs by scrapping 600 in-house posts and reassigning work to staff in its executive agencies. More than half of the posts to be scrapped are in the Commission’s department for research, and the remainder come from other departments involved in the framework research programme.

An internal communication adopted by the college of commissioners yesterday (18 September) envisages transferring the posts in 2014-20, and at the same time creating an additional 350 posts in the agencies, where staff costs are lower. A common support centre would also be created for Horizon 2020, the EU’s framework programme for research and innovation.

The changes are intended to contain administration costs as funding for research is increased in the next multi-annual budget cycle. The value of research programmes managed by the agencies is projected to more than double between now and 2020, when its annual level would reach €13.3 billion.

The elimination of hundreds of Commission posts prompted heated exchanges between the heads of commissioners’ private offices anxious to defend their departments, but the proposal was approved by the college of commissioners on Wednesday (18 September) without debate. The plan was drafted by the Commission’s departments for the budget and for administration and human resources under the supervision of the secretariat-general. It has not been made public.

Savings

The main savings achieved by this initiative come from transferring posts from the Commission to the financially leaner operations of the agencies, and from recruiting a higher share of contract agents to them than is permissible in the Commission. Common support services are also expected to deliver economies of scale. The consequent savings would allow the creation of additional posts in the agencies, to deal with the workload of administering the increased research funding. The plan was drawn up on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis conducted over the past 12 months.

A common support centre, hosted by the Commission’s research department, is intended to centralise services for information technology systems and operations, legal support, audit, business processes, and data management for all research-related Commission departments, executive agencies and other bodies involved in Horizon 2020.

The delegation of programme management tasks from the Commission to the executive agencies requires the approval of the Committee for Executive Agencies, on which the member states are represented, and a decision from the European Parliament not to oppose the move.

The Commission’s staff cuts come on top of the 5% reduction which the Commission pledged in 2011 and which appears in a draft inter-institutional agreement on budget and financial management agreed between the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.